OCMA Blog

Local: CalOptima

Thanks in part to OCMA advocacy, in March, the CalOptima Board of Directors approved establishing a 'Community Network', allowing direct contracts with physicians in order to provide greater access to services for CalOptima enrollees.

Also in March, the County Board of Supervisors modified the county ordinance governing CalOptima to require an additional supervisor be added to the CalOptima Board of Directors. As a result, Supervisor Todd Spitzer has joined Supervisor Janet Nguyen on the CalOptima Board.

State: Health Care Bills

SB 1215 (Hernandez): Healing arts licensees: referrals (CMA Position: OPPOSE) - which aimed to eliminate the in-office exception to the self-referral law for advanced imaging, anatomic pathology, radiation therapy, and physical therapy. This bill would have been a major blow to the integrated care model, resulting in increased costs as these services would have been driven toward the more expensive hospital setting and inhibit the development of practices that integrate and coordinate care. We have successfully managed to defeat this harmful bill in committee.

AB 2400 (Ridley-Thomas) Health care coverage: provider contracts (CMA Position: SPONSOR) - was approved through a 55-8 vote. If signed into law, this bill will prohibit contracts issued, amended or renewed after January 1, 2015, from including a provision that terminates a provider if he or she exercises the right to negotiate, accept or refuse a material change to the contract. It would also prohibit plans from requiring participation in unspecified current and future products or product networks, unless the plan discloses the reimbursement rate, method of payment and any other contract terms that are materially different from those of the underlying commercial agreement.

National: Medicare SGR

Over CMA's strong opposition to another short term patch, on March 31, the night before the SGR cut, the House and Senate voted on the 17th patch in a decade. With the President's signature, the bill takes effect and provides the following:

Stops the 24% Medicare physician payment cut for 1 year until April 2015.